Trans Fat (Spoken Word piece as performed at Camp Trans)

August 23, 2008

Hopefully I’ll be getting to writing new posts/material soon. I originally wrote in in 2006, (an earlier version is included as text in the Being and Loving Me project) but didn’t really perform it in a group setting until CT ’08, with a couple changes. So–

Trans Fat

To a country concerned about consuming trans fat–
“Will it block up our arteries,
belabor our hearts,
befoul our blood?”
To a nation with a notion to nullify trans fat–
Wanting clear credentials proclaiming:
“Completely chemically natural;
To keep your conscience clean.”
To a people panicked by trans fat pollution–
From the ballgame burger bun,
To the Michigan music margarine,
To the dyke’s dozen doughnuts.

Like your worst nightmare:
Merely to gaze on these fatty mounds
Will invite all the worst of heart disease,
And any who’ve tasted these curves refuse
Your resistant abstinent insistence
Point blank.

For my body’s feast is so rich,
You will swell and strain hard against your belt
Just to taste it;
So juicy, so savory your lips will ache,
Hot and wet without even a touch;
And when your lips do touch
This instance of transubstantiation,
You will be drunk for days
Before you can think enough to drink;
And then, there will be no partially to your hydrogenation;
No un to your saturation, mono or poly;
No shackle unshattered by your infatuation;

For I am no cow, chained up and injected with synthetic hormones–
I consented.
They don’t ask they take even a free range cow’s milk;
I give mine freely–if you’ll beg.
From my breast to your mouth I will flow down your throat
I will lodge myself in your gut and stay there,
No matter what fasting or purging you try to take.
At every turn my curves will be there,
Encircling every journey, every step, and every thought.
At night the memory of me will surround your circulation
Clogging your arteries in a southbound traffic jam,
Whose nocturnal emissions you will deny. and deny. and deny,
Until you are forced to admit that
People are hotter than they used to be.

The fires of the “accidents” you leave behind
Are embers of the burn inflaming your brain–
That heat in your heart you may hate, berate, and belittle,
A protest in your core you can pretend to ignore
An angry strike announcing:
“Don’t downsize desire!”
Whose anger at unanswered demands will author
A work stoppage impairing vital functions;
“Irresponsible, un-American, illegal.”

When this heart attack comes,
The best transplant will not uproot me,
The best excision will not excise me,
The best bypass will not pass me–
So will you heed that preventive health directive,
To eat only soy and oats,
Beside a bountiful banquet?
Will you forestall that firestorm
With abstinence and denial?
Will you fast in fear of this fruit,
With its free radicals and its genetic deconstruction?
The first symptom of your subsequent scurvy will be
Stiffness of the lower extremities,
Which this rose’s hips will do nothing to cure.

The nutrient you need isn’t in any plain pear,
Only this raw passion fruit,
This unhealthy, unnatural, unrepentant trans fat.
So will you deal with your damn diet now?
Don’t dream you can delay,
But discover in this fat, your fugitive delight.